Restoring reputation through digital diplomacy: the European Union’s strategic narratives on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic

Combining computational methods with qualitative analyses, this research explores how the European Union (EU) employed digital diplomacy to manage its reputation during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, it addresses two influential dimensions of digital diplomacy: narratives and social networks. First, to identify how narratives evolved during the different phases of the crisis, dynamic topic modeling is applied to a sample of 12,935 tweets in English published by eight central EU authorities from January 1st, 2020, to March 11th, 2021. The most representative tweets of the six most predominant topics on COVID-19 are analyzed through the strategic narratives’ framework. Second, a social network analysis of the retweets of 215 authorities linked to the European External Action Service is conducted to identify the communication flow and the most influential actors. The results corroborate what the crisis communication literature anticipates. As the pandemic evolved, strategic crisis narratives became more consistent, and the diplomatic network less hierarchical and centralized. After an undetermined start, the COVID-19 crisis was ultimately rationalized as a challenge that reaffirmed the EU’s functionality and values. During the acute phase of the crisis, diplomats were less spontaneous, since their content was more dependent on their superiors, but in later stages they produced proportionally more original content themselves. Therefore, the findings suggest, first, that the EU’s performance on Twitter became more competent over time, and second, a potential correlation between narratives and networks: better defined strategic narratives seem to indicate a more genuine digital diplomacy

Convergence of U-statistics for interacting particle systems

The convergence of U-statistics has been intensively studied for estimators based on families of i.i.d. random variables and variants of them. In most cases, the independence assumption is crucial [Lee90, de99]. When dealing with Feynman-Kac and other interacting particle systems of Monte Carlo type, one faces a new type of problem. Namely, in a sample of N particles obtained through the corresponding algorithms, the distributions of the particles are correlated -although any finite number of them is asymptotically independent with respect to the total number N of particles. In the present article, exploiting the fine asymptotics of particle systems, we prove convergence theorems for U-statistics in this framework

On the Spectral properties of Multi-branes, M2 and M5 branes

In this note we summarize some of the properties found in several papers. We characterize spectral properties of the quantum mechanical hamiltonian of theories with fermionic degrees of freedom beyond semiclassical approximation. We obtain a general class of bosonic polynomial potentials for which the Schr\"oedinger operator has a discrete spectrum. This class includes all the scalar potentials in membrane, 5-brane, p-branes, multiple M2 branes, BLG and ABJM theories. We also give a sufficient condition for discreteness of the spectrum for supersymmmetric and non supersymmetric theories with a fermionic contribution. We characterize then the spectral properties of different theories: the BMN matrix model, the supermembrane with central charges and a bound state of $N$ D2 with $m$ D0. We show that, while the first two models have a purely discrete spectrum with finite multiplicity, the latter has a continuous spectrum starting from a constant given in terms of the monopole charge.Comment: 10pg, Latex, Contributions to the Conference XVI European Workshop on String Theory 2010, Madrid June 14-18, 201

«Vosotros sois la luz del mundo». Explicando a los jóvenes la vocación al Opus Dei. [Reseña]

Reseña de Martin RHONHEIMER, «Vosotros sois la luz del mundo». Explicando a los jóvenes la vocación al Opus Dei, Madrid: Rialp, 2009, 272 pp., 13 x 21, ISBN 978-84-321-3727-3

Celibato por el reino: carisma y profecía. 32.ª Semana Nacional para Institutos de Vida Consagrada. [Reseña]

Reseña de Bonifacio FERNÁNDEZ y Fernando PRADO (eds.), Celibato por el reino: carisma y profecía. 32.ª Semana Nacional para Institutos de Vida Consagrada, Publicaciones Claretianas, Madrid 2003, 390 pp., 14 x 21, ISBN 84-7966-259-

On the groundstate of octonionic matrix models in a ball

In this work we examine the existence and uniqueness of the groundstate of a SU(N)x G2 octonionic matrix model on a bounded domain of R^N. The existence and uniqueness argument of the groundstate wavefunction follows from the Lax-Milgram theorem. Uniqueness is shown by means of an explicit argument which is drafted in some detail.Comment: Latex, 6 page